Platemark: prints and the printmaking ecosystem

In s3e9 of Platemark, host Ann Shafer talks with James Siena and Katia Santibañez. Both artists, who are married to each other, are painters and printmakers who split their time between New York City and Otis, MA. In the past few years, they have collaborated on four reduction woodcuts with Shore Publishing. An exhibition of the full sets of working proofs for these collaborations were recently on...

In s3e8, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with Dave Cloutier who recently opened Center Arts and Studios (CAS) in the Mill Centre, Baltimore. CAS offers classes, equipment, critiques, guidance, and studio spaces to second-career artists. A passion project for Dave, it has long been his goal to encourage artists and their meaningful work to find each other. His belief in letting the work that needs...

In s3e7, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig sit down with Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Saint Louis Art Museum, to talk about the exhibition Catching the Moment: Contemporary Art from the Ted L. and Maryanne Ellison Simmons Collection , which ran June 26–September 11, 2022. The Simmons collection provides an opportunity to take a deep dive into three artists they collected...

In s3e6, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with Bill Hall, master printer (retired) at Pace Prints for nearly thirty years. His earliest years in New York were spent working at the legendary Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop . After his arrival at Pace Prints, his intaglio skills were honed under the tutelage of Aldo Crommelynck, the legendary printer of many of Picasso's late prints. At Pace, h...

In s3e5, Ann Shafer talks with fellow podcaster and print lover Miranda Metcalf, whose show,  Hello, Print Friend , is the internet's most popular podcast about prints and printmaking. Hello, Print Friend's Instagram account has over 53K followers! Both Shafer and Metcalf are self-described print evangelists and have much to discuss. Listen in as two print nerds geek out about all things print rel...

Platemark's series three offers its first interview with an artist, Tom Hück . And what a great place to start. In s3e4, Platemark hosts Ben Levy and Ann Shafer sit down with Hück whose large-scale, multi-panel woodcuts skewer rural life in the American Midwest in all its unabashed weirdness and glory. They talk about Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Albrecht Dürer's Rhinoceros , and the rest of Hück's her...

In s3e3, Ann Shafer and Ben Levy talk with James Wehn, Van Vleck Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, about prints, museums, curatorial work, and Israel van Meckenem. Episode photo: Eric Baillies Israhel van Meckenem (German, c. 1445–1503). The Angry Wife , c. 1495/1503. Engraving. Sheet (trimmed to plate mark): 16.7 x 11...

In s3e2, Ann Shafer and Ben Levy sit down with the three master printers at Tandem Press: Joe Freye, Jason Ruhl, and Patrick Smyczek. Find out what makes a dream team in a print shop.

In this first episode of series 3 (interviews with luminaries of the print ecosystem), Ann Shafer and Ben Levy sit down with Paula Panczenko, executive director of Tandem Press, and Russell Panczenko, retired director of the Chazen Museum of Art. Both entities are affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

In s2e20, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig conclude their discussion of Rembrandt van Rijn, the man who made etching was it is today. In this third of three episodes on Rembrandt, they tackle his etchings of religious scenes. Rembrandt made a lot of them and they are intense. They are special because Rembrandt humanizes the people in them, which really hadn't happened before. It's almost as if viewers ca...

In s2e19, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig continue talking about the best etcher ever, Rembrandt van Rijn. In this second of three episodes on Rembrandt, they tackle genre scenes (those would be scenes of everyday life) and portraits. Rembrandt is the consummate storyteller and in these etchings he gives us regular, everyday people like print dealers, cooks, beggars, and even rat catchers. His etchings...

In Platemark e2e18, Tru Ludwig and Ann Shafer begin a three-parter about the master of etching, Rembrandt van Rijn. In this first episode on RvR, Tru sets the stage and takes us through some of Rembrandt's key landscape etchings, including the iconic The Three Trees . (The second episode looks at genre—scenes of everyday life—and portraiture; the third looks at religious imagery.) It's funny, but...

In s2ep17, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk about one of their favorite engravers of all time, Hendrick Goltzius. A Dutchman, Goltzius was preternaturally gifted with a burin and made glorious prints of all sorts. Ann's favorite is the Farnese Hercules , a large engraving showing two Dutchmen looking up at a giant sculpture of Hercules, which viewers see from behind. Quirky and wonderful, these prin...

In s2ep16, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk about the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation that affected so much of the 16th century in Western Europe. The focus of the episode is Pieter Brueghel the Elder who developed a new vocabulary to talk about the lives of peasants, as well as lessons to live by. And don't forget those sins and sinners. Episode image: Pieter van der Hey...

In s2ep15, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig continue talking about game-changer Martin Luther and the effects of his 95 theses against the Catholic Church, which brought about the Protestant Reformation in 1517. In this episode they talk about the biting criticism of politics in the church and the schism with the Lutherans/Protestants that is the subject of prints by Hans Holbein the younger and Lucas Cr...

In s2ep14, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig look at Martin Luther and the effects of his 95 theses against the Catholic Church. Once the only patron of the arts, the Church faced a reckoning when Martin Luther brought about the Protestant Reformation in 1517. In addition to getting rid of the intercessor (the church and its priests), Protestantism calls for no images to distract. What's an artist to do i...

In s2e13, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk about reproductive engravings and how they helped spread Italian art and style to Northern European countries. Italian Giorgio Ghisi worked for Antwerp publisher Hieronymous Cock and did much of the heavy lifting. The episode concludes with Federico Barocci and two of the loveliest etching and engravings yet discussed. Episode image: Federico Barocci (Itali...

Platemark host Ann Shafer is thrilled to announce the first Baltimore Fine Art Print Fair is scheduled for April 29-May 1, 2022. Ann and Tru Ludwig talk about the print fair's origins as a production of the Print, Drawing & Photograph Society of the Baltimore Museum of Art. That former fair ran from 1990-2017, and has been shuttered. Ann, along with partners Brian Miller and Julie Funderburk, have...

In episode 12, Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig discuss the titan of Venetian painting, Titian, who happened to also make prints. Plus Ann and Tru take a deep dive into the epic first book of anatomy, Vesalius' On the Fabric of the Human Body , 1543. It turns out Titian had a hand in some of the woodcut illustrations in it. Episode image: page from Andreas Vesalius (Italian, 1514–1564). De humani corpori...

In s2e11, Tru Ludwig and Ann Shafer talk about chiaroscuro woodcuts before moving on to the Mannerist painter and printmaker Parmigianino. Coming off the High Renaissance and the Sack of Rome in 1527, artists were looking for ways to shake it up. Out goes the solid forms and placid emotions and in comes the twisting, off-kilter compositions and extremes in emotions. Parmigianino is the first to re...

In this bonus episode, Ann Shafer talks to Tru Ludwig about being an artist and art historian, and how being a professor in both disciplines plays out. It's a fascinating confluence of ideas and passions in one person.

In s2e10, co-hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig continue talking about Italian printmaking in the 16th century focusing on MarcAntonio Raimondi, Agostino Veneziano, Giulio Romano, and our first female artist, Diana Scultori. They take a deep dive into MarcAntonio's Judgment of Paris (after a drawing by Raphael), from which Edouard Manet extracted the figural group for Déjuener sur l'herbe . Plus, the...

In s2e9, co-hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig continue their conversation about early Italian printmaking with a strong focus on the engravings of Andrea Mantegna. They also talk about chiaroscuro woodcuts, always keeping the North within eyesight. Episode image: Andrea Mantegna (Italian, c. 1431–1506). Risen Christ between Saints Andrew and Longinus , c. 1470/75. Engraving. Sheet: 329 x 306 mm. (12...

In s2e8, co-hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk about the early history of prints and books in Italy, comparing it to Northern Europe. Differences in style and materials are discussed using the example of Masaccio's The Holy Trinity with the Virgin and St. John and donors , 1425–27, the fresco painting in chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy, and the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan and Hubert van...

In s2e7, co-hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig discuss intaglio printmaking techniques, which include engraving, etching, mezzotint, and drypoint. They also talk about aquatint and other methods of getting an image incised into a copper plate. Images related to the episode are at platemarkpodcast.com.